It Happened Here--Adam Helmer's Run

 

Tall and lanky¹, Adam Helmer came from sturdy peasant stock – the son of a Palatine farmer and his wife who had immigrated as children with Adam's grandparents and the other Palatines around 1709. At age 24, Helmer must have exuded strength and vigor that led his commanding officer Colonel Bellinger to select him as a scout when the orders came from General Schuyler to assign one of every fifteen militiamen from each militia company to scouting duty to keep track of Indian and Tory activity in the Tryon County.

For the past two years the settlements along the Mohawk Valley and the other valleys of the frontier of New York and Pennsylvania lay under a haze of uncertainty and anxiety that would develop into a cloud of fear that would hover over this area for the next six years, continuing nearly a year after the guns fell silent at Yorktown.

A stroke had cut short the life of the greatly respected squire and leader of the region, Sir William Johnson in 1774. With his death the old loyalties to the British crown began to wane among the heretofore strongly pro-British Palatines.  Unrest in New York, developments in New England and the publication of the Continental Congress' declaration of rights focused opposition to the British. The surviving Johnsons – Sir William's son John and his nephew Guy – declared their Loyalist allegiances and tried to suppress the growing “Whig” faction. The Whigs organized Committees of Safety and declared their support for the Continental Congress. The Johnson clan began to collect arms and gunpowder and fortify their properties, and, most alarmingly, began to court the support of the Iroquois to defend the Crown. In January 1776 Congress ordered General Schuyler to confiscate the arms collected by the Johnsons. Sir John was put on parole but he continued organizing his fellow Tories, violating his parole. Schuyler ordered his arrest. Vowing revenge, Sir John escaped to Quebec with many of his supporters. Guy Johnson escaped to Oswego through Iroquois territory, gathering Indian allies for the Crown.

The settlements along the New York frontier had their last taste of Indian warfare in 1757 during the French and Indian War and memories were keen from that experience. With the approach of hostilities, forts were built or strengthened near settlements and signal cannon were mounted in them to warn settlers. A screen of scouts were deployed in the field to detect activities of Indians and Tories. 

"Burial Place of Lieut Adam/Helmer and wife Anna/
Bellinger Helmer, A Famous/ Mohawk Valley Scout in/
Revolutionary War, Purchased/ This Farm in 1803" 
--Cottle Rd. Weedsport

Adam Helmer's first action came in the summer of 1777 when a Tory and Indian army led by Lt. Colonel Bary St. Leger laid siege to Fort Stanwix on their way to link up with General Burgoyne's invasion heading south from Montreal. Militia general Nicholas Herkimer led a relief party of Tryon county militiamen to assist the beleaguered fort. He chose three scouts to deliver a message to the fort ordering the Fort's Colonel to make a sortie out against the besieging Tories and Indians as Herkimer's force closed in. Adam Helmer was one of these scouts chosen.

Skirting around the enemy forces required that the scouts go far off the trails into the swampy backwaters of the Mohawk river. A sudden summer downpour added to the flooded conditions Helmer and the other scouts faced as they approached the fort. At one point Helmer was forced to float down a swollen creek, hiding under a pile of brush with his orders for Colonel Gansevoort tucked under his cap. Stealing through the enemy lines Helmer was the first to reach the fort.

Meanwhile, Colonel St Leger's forces, learning that Herkimer's militia were on their way, prepared a devastating ambush, in a narrow valley near where the Oriskany creek crossed the trail on its way to the Mohawk river, six miles from the fort. Herkimer's amateur army walked headlong into it. The first crash of musketry felled large numbers of militiamen, including Herkimer, himself who was shot from his horse with a musket ball in his leg. As militiamen sought the shelter of large trees along the trail Herkimer was carried to the base of a large beech tree, where his wound was tied off. From that position he continued to direct his men in battle as he lit and smoked his pipe. The downpour that Adam Helmer experienced interrupted the battle, soaking the gunpowder in the muskets' priming pans, rendering them temporarily useless, but it allowed the Palatine General time to form his men into a rough defensive perimeter and counter a devastating enemy tactic he observed. Herkimer saw that his men, desperately fighting as individuals behind trees were being killed after they were fired upon and had returned fire. The Indians intentionally fired on them to draw their fire. While the militiamen were struggling to reload, the Iroquois would rush in, grapple with them hand-to-hand and kill them with tomahawks or spears.  Herkimer paired his men together so one of the pair would always have a loaded musket and could defend the pair while the other reloaded.

In the first moments of the battle Herkimer sent out scouts to the fort to get help. They arrived at the fort a short time after Adam Helmer had delivered his message. A relief party was organized and attacked through the lightly defended Indian and Tories' camp. The Tory and Indian ambush had been very successful but it failed to annihilate Herkimer's forces or achieve a rout which would allow the Indians to destroy the column piecemeal. Instead, the militiamen had put together a credible defense and though they suffered serious losses they were beginning to make the Indians pay as well. Just as the Indians and Tory assault was beginning to falter they received the news. A force from the fort was rampaging through the Tory/Indian encampment. The Indians broke off their attack to attempt to rescue their food and possessions. The shattered Tyron county militia, instead of pressing on, limped back to Fort Dayton. The wounded general would bleed to death after a botched operation to amputated his wounded leg, 10 days later.

One might expect that the young scout would prefer the relative safety of Fort Stanwix over the hazards of slipping through enemy lines and through miles of Indian held or unoccupied wilderness, but within hours Adam Helmer was on his way, again, having volunteered to deliver the news of the battle and of Fort Stanwix' continuing precarious position, to General Schuyler and the Committee of Safety in Albany.

In the weeks that followed, American General Benedict Arnold would lead an expedition that would come to the relief of the Fort after creating a fantastic ruse. Arnold received word that the Tory Colonel Walter Butler was trying to recruit valley residents to the Loyalist side and had planned to meet with uncommitted farmers in a house in the settlement of Mohawk, near Fort Dayton. Arnold surrounded the house, captured Butler and the farmers, and declared he would hang them all as spies. Among those captured were a young feeble-minded man, Hans Yost Schuyler, and Han's brother. Hans lived on the fringes of colonial settlements and often associated with the Indians from the valley, many of whom were with the attacking Tory forces. He developed a reputation as being something of a “see-er” or prophet among the Indians, as he was known to, at times, exhibit strange behaviors and talk in tongues. (He may, in fact had a seizure disorder.) With the encouragement of his mother², who was frantic with worry that her two sons might be hanged, he agreed to Arnold's scheme. First the edges of his coat and hat were shot through with musket balls; then he was compelled to run to his Indian friends in the enemy encampment, appearing as if he had escaped the rebels, who had fired on him. With him he carried a story that a vast rebel army was approaching to relieve Fort Stanwix. ( In fact Arnold had less than 2000 men.) When asked the size of the army he rolled his eyes to the overhanging trees, to indicate they were as numerous as the leaves of the trees. His story was supported by the arrival of several Oneida Indians, from several directions, whose arrival had been orchestrated by Arnold. The Oneidas had broken with the other Iroquois tribes and were officially neutral, but increasingly sided with the Rebels. With their arrival, the St. Leger expedition collapsed, and beat a disorganized retreat to Oneida lake and Fort Oswego. The Indians who felt deceived and betrayed by their Tory allies took out many of their frustrations by tomahawking Tory stragglers and stripping them of their uniforms and weapons.

Late, the following summer Adam Helmer was again in the field, at the head of a small party of nine scouts. Their mission was to penetrate deep into the Iroquois' staging area along the Unadilla river to discover the state of Tory and Indian preparations to disrupt the settlers fall harvest; to attack the settlers when they were most exposed in their fields at harvest time. Helmer's men stopped to drink at a spring on the farm of Percifer Carr in what would become the hamlet of Edmeston. Suddenly shots rang out. Three scouts went down and the little patrol was embroiled in a desperate battle with a war party of what Helmer estimated were some 40 Indians. The surviving members of Helmer's patrol were driven back across the Unadilla River. In the melee Adam was able to escape and hide in a thicket.

As soon as the attacking Indians were out of sight, Helmer lit out back up the trail toward the American settlements. At one point he stopped and hid off the trail to see if he was being followed and discovered, indeed he was. The group of Indians that had surprised his patrol were but an advance party of some 200 Indians and Tories he counted. (The actual number would be closer to 400.) Breaking away silently and circling ahead of the Indians, Adam began a desperate run to reach the scattered settlements and warn the inhabitants ahead of the Tory/Indian forces.

                                                                                      

First he ran north east to the farms along Schuyler Lake; then he headed north west to Andrustown. Andrustown had been burned to the ground except for one farm back in July of that summer, but settlers had returned to salvage what they could and bring in the fall harvest. Helmer's sister and her husband were there, working their fields. Helmer warned them and they immediately set off for the safety of Fort Dayton, but not before giving Helmer a fresh pair of mocassins to replace a pair he had quite worn through. Returning to the main trail he passed through a settlement later called Columbia, and Petrie's Corners and warned the inhabitants there. By this time the Indians must have been quite close because at Columbia one old man returned to his house to snatch up something he had forgotten and was shot as he emerged from his front gate by approaching Indians.

On and on Helmer ran, spurred on by the certain knowledge that the Indians had most likely picked up his trail and the fastest among them were probably in hot pursuit.³ Most likely Helmer followed the ridge trail that meandered up and down the hills, gradually gaining altitude until it reached a crest along the edge of the Mohawk valley. Perhaps he got a second wind when he saw the trail, choked with the summer's growth of blackberry brambles, begin to fall away from him into the valley and he could see little wisps of smoke from the chimneys of the settlement known as German Flatts, (now Mohawk). 

On a farm on the outskirts of German Flatts, along the Warren Road that led into the trail that wound south, a ten year old girl, Catherine Meyer was outside, perhaps doing her chores as the sun was setting. Suddenly she heard a crashing in the brush on the overgrown trail. What she saw next was a sight that would stay with her throughout her life. A man burst from the woods. His clothes were in tatters; his eyes were bloodshot and his hands and face and limbs were bleeding and cut from the brush and brambles he had forced his way through. He paused only long enough to shout “Flee for your lives, the enemy is not far behind”, then he ran on to the next house to repeat his warning. Adam Helmer repeated his warning at every house he passed until he reached the gates of Fort Herkimer and soon the warning cannon from the fort was echoing down the valley.

Adam Helmer after delivering his report to the commander of Fort Herkimer, and having a light meal fell into a deep sleep, undisturbed by the arrival of hundreds of people to the fort. He had run, in one very long day, an incredible 35 to 40 miles!

The next day the Indian and Tory forces roamed through the area bringing widespread destruction. Sixty three houses, 59 barns and 3 grist mills were burned. Two hundred and thirty five horses, 229 “horned” cattle, 279 sheep and 93 oxen were taken off or killed. But because of Helmer's warning only two settlers died—the one who was killed at his gate, and another who hid in his barn, which the Tories burned.

 

Helmer slept for thirty six hours, before being woken by grateful, anxious neighbors who worried his run might have caused him fatal injury. But three days later the indomitable scout was leading a party back to the ambush site on the Unadilla River to bury the fallen scouts. Today, a D.A.R. commemorative tablet marks their gravesite.

1Adam lived until 1830. His grand children told their grand children of his accomplishments as well as his physical characteristics – 5'10, 130 lbs, thin and sinewy, comparing some of them favorably, with their great great grandfather.

2In the small world of colonial New York personal connections abound. Hans Yost Schuyler was a distant relative of General Philip Schuyler, and his mother was the sister of General Nicholas Herkimer.

3Walter Edmonds in his historical novel Drums Along the Mohawk fictionalized this chase, portraying a desperate scene in which the pursuing Indians closed to within tomahawk throwing distance before the Helmer character escaped. A movie followed by the same name with Henry Fonda portraying the scout.

Marker of the Week-- My Favorite Marker                                                                                 (or to be precise, site marked by an NYSHM)

 



Un-restored, but simply maintained to be lived in by generations upon generations since 1724,  this little house is a stone's throw from the Hudson river in the village of Athens, and less than 10 feet from the busy NY 385.  I don't know if the structure was built this way; or has sunken over the nearly three centuries it has stood here; or if in the the road's evolution from quiet dirt path, to paved and resurfaced and resurfaced and resurfaced State Highway, the road has risen in front of it.
Without the State Marker in front, it might well be mistaken for a cottage in the Netherlands, Ireland, or rural England, Scotland or Wales. 

 












 Next Week-- In Precarious Positions and another Marker of the Week

E-Mail Me: If you have comments about this blog or any other thing having to do with NYSHM's I would be delighted to hear from you. I would be especially interested if you know of any new or interesting markers or can report on any efforts to restore old markers. My email is tba998@gmail.com I look forward to hearing and sharing your thoughts on this blog.